CR927 battery

Silicon-based CR927 battery could soon become the new industry standard

Silicon-based CR927 battery could soon become the new industry standard. However, silicon has a serious swelling problem that has hampered its commercialization. A multidisciplinary team of researchers from BeDimensional and the Graphene Flagship at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and VARTA MicroInnovation GmbH in Austria have identified how to use graphene as a key component in practical applications to overcome silicon's swelling problem.

As things stand, silicon is a strong contender as the next generation anode material for CR927 battery. Replacing state-of-the-art graphite anodes with silicon could increase lithium battery storage capacity by 10 times. However, when charging and discharging, silicon expands and contracts, which mechanically stresses the material and causes structural damage, ultimately causing the battery to fail after just a few uses. Now, researchers from the Graphene Flagship have devised a way to keep CR927 battery stable using just a small amount of graphene. The newly developed graphene-added battery can withstand 300 charge and discharge cycles and has a battery capacity 30% higher than any existing alternative.

Christoph Stangl from VARTA Micro Innovation GmbH, a partner in the Graphene Flagship, explained that adding just a small amount of graphene is enough to evenly expand and stabilize the electrode structure in silicon, which allows people to truly use the outstanding performance of silicon-based CR927 battery. After development, this button battery with added graphene can be used in countless small electronic products produced by some major companies around the world, including watches, wearable devices, car keys and wireless headphones. The application industries are all rapidly growing market segments. VARTA is known for developing customized energy storage solutions, and the high-energy technology progress based on silicon/graphene will promote the production of better batteries.

Vittorio Pellegrini of BeDimensional, a member of the Graphene Flagship, said that the above milestone design can be achieved by adding only a small amount of graphene. If a large amount of graphene is added, the proportion of silicon in the battery will be reduced, and the overall capacity of the battery will be reduced. Silicon adds more energy that can be stored in the battery, and the addition of a small amount of graphene can prevent the problem of structural damage and failure of the battery while maintaining the battery capacity.

The EU-funded Graphene Flagship has helped advance this research in many ways. In the first phase of the project, not only was the original idea of developing a graphene-added battery decided upon, but also BeDimensional was set up to supply the graphene material and develop many new graphene-based technologies using a patented graphene production method.

The synergistic use of the Graphene Flagship brings together cutting-edge research work from IIT, the new spin-off BeDimensional, and established industrial manufacturers like VARTA for integrated innovation. Thanks to the Graphene Flagship Pioneer projects, researchers can really focus on increasing the maturity of the technology and creating highly mature product prototypes. The research team is now working on commercializing this battery technology. The team is facing a new challenge to develop a long-lasting and reliable graphene battery for electric vehicles.

The success of this collaboration shows that Graphene Flagship Pioneer projects can greatly help researchers move materials from the laboratory to the development of real components, assemblies and system integration.

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